Back To School Resolutions

My kid is starting senior year tomorrow.

He’s already done “senior sunrise” and is now cramming in his summer reading. Why do we return so early in the Midwest? I don’t know.

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The year ahead brings exciting challenges: visits to colleges and gap-year programs, and another set of shifts in reducing my over-functioning and letting this emerging adult do more of his own thing.

I am pleased to say I was never called into service as an alarm clock this summer—not for work, and not even for early-morning cross-country practice. This gave us space for more peaceful mornings.
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Kids often want to use their phones as alarm clocks, but keeping phones out of bedrooms solves so many problems.

We’d all sleep better if we weren’t reviewing email, scrolling social media, or checking texts right before bed. And the middle of the night is the WORST time to be on the group text​

Not just because the interruptions wreck sleep, and sleep affects both mental and physical health, but because 1 a.m. is also when teenagers are at their most disinhibited. The things that seem hilarious, urgent, or perfectly reasonable at midnight can look very different in the morning.

So as we head into another school year, consider keeping phones out of bedrooms, adjusting sleep schedules so the start of school doesn’t feel like jet lag, and thinking about one new challenge your child, tween, or teen can take on this year.

Is it biking to school with friends?

Keeping a written calendar, since many schools don’t allow students to bring phones?

Finally learning to use a digital calendar?
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​And what are YOUR goals?

Is this the year you put away the passwords for the grade-checking apps and only check quarterly—or not at all?

As I wrote about in Growing Up in Public, our kids are far more surveilled than we were. From location tracking to grade-checking, parents now have digital access to an astonishing amount of information about their kids.

For many parents, having access to every assignment and grade can be a little too much. So many of the kids and parents I interviewed for my book described these tools as creating more conflict and mistrust than they were worth.